Chapter 14: Chapter 14: How To Deal With Mana Exhaustion

Noticing me dozing off at the table in the library, Rachel helps me walk out of the library while leaving all of the bullets behind. I can fill it with smokeless powder later after I actually can walk again. I swear, my legs are flimsier than jello.

“Poor, poor, sweet Helen, I know you like guns, but you need to know your limits, it’s the second time you doze off from mana exhaustion,” Rachel comments as I am barely able to walk on top of the floor. I’m like a drunk person, or worse.

“Ah, ye, ye,” I say.

“Gee, you’re worse than Ostwald when he accidentally boils Ether alcohol in the kitchen,” Rachel says as she opens the door leading to our room. It is still morning, the sun is probably still in the east. Still, with my eyes not wanting to even cooperate with me in the first place. “There’s a reason why the kitchen is banned for Ostwald.”

I laid down on the bed, with my eyes fully open but my hands are not even able to move a bit from their place. Basically, every single part of my body goes numb, is this the effect of mana exhaustion? I can’t imagine what the implication is in a battle.

“You are magically paralyzed, practically, the state between completely unconscious and conscious. There are many ways of bypassing it, with equally risky and crazy methods. Of course, I am under strict order not to tell you a bit about this,” Rachel says.

Let’s just listen to what my sister has to say.

“However, with us both being too crazy about our invention, you with your guns, and me with my acidic cotton, I think it’s fair enough for me to tell you a secret that I swear to Ostwald not to tell anyone about it,” Rachel says.

She then grabs something from her desk. “Behold, a mana potion. Not really, more like, a minor mana recovery potion, made from coffee, some of the herbs in the kitchen, and many things,” Rachel says. It’s a brown liquid inside of a clear glass bottle with a seal made from cork.

Wait a minute, my sister is going to feed me an unknown substance out of nowhere? Is she nuts or something? Kids are dangerous… She opens the cork, and without any ability to move my hands, I am at the mercy of Rachel. She forcefully opens my mouth and pours out the liquid into my mouth.

It tastes disgusting. It’s like jelly but in every way terrible. What is in that potion? Spinach? Carrots? Spinach, carrots, and coffee? Was Ostwald serious about that potion? She forces me to gulp down the whole bottle into my stomach. I can feel every bit of jiggly brown jelly traveling down my throat.

I feel my stomach rumbling, just as if something boils in there. Rachel puts the cork back on that clear bottle. I want to strangle her for making me drink that potion of unknown ingredients, did she try to poison me or something?

However, slowly, I can move my hand, and eventually, I can move my leg. There is no headache, unlike the last time, but still, I really feel like throwing out my whole gastric content into the toilet. That potion is horrible.

“Do you feel better yet, Helen?” Rachel asks.

I just nod, while covering my mouth, I really don’t want to throw out on the crisp white sheet of my bed.

“The potion tastes horrible, I know, but well, Ostwald gives the recipe to me, perhaps, there is a way to improve the taste,” Rachel nods.

Suddenly, someone knocks on our door. I stand up from my bed and approach the door, revealing the goblin butler, Larse. He was carrying a tray with two cups alongside a tea pot. “Milk tea, young miss, I didn’t see you at the library. However, I see Miss Rachel carrying you to the bedroom. May I enter?”

I nod.

“Excuse me,” Larse enters the room.

He puts the tray on my table then she left the room and rushes back into the kitchen. He might feel uncomfortable in our room. I close the door again, then I grab the tray and pour the light brown liquid into the provided white ceramic cups.

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Rachel takes one of the cups and immediately sips it, “Hmm, mine’s better, but Albert got it right.”

“Can you even analyze it?” I sip the cup, and it tastes alright.

Rachel then glares at the cup, “Let’s see, water is very dominant, tea is the second dominant component, he uses heavy cream instead of milk, good, the sugar is probably two tablespoons. This is the traditional recipe, though.”

I am amazed. How does she perceive ratios or different chemicals like that, though? This thing is mixed. An average person won’t be able to differentiate between the tea and the milk inside of a drink like this. Well, Rachel’s an apothecary after all.

“Father will invite you and me to go shooting later. I just want to let you know,” Rachel says before she pours more of her tea into the cup. Hmm, yes, shooting, finally. My father seems to be a gun expert, at least, to some extent. We have a lot of rifles, after all, just not an M16.

“Awesome, I can’t wait,” I say.

“I wish I can say the same,” Rachel sighs.

We finish our tea and continue with our daily activities. Rachel went back to the library, this time with a lab coat and a makeshift mask out of white clean cloth and I also do the same thing as her. I need to finish the bullets. I bring the smokeless powder container into the library to start the handloading.

While Rachel is busy training with her apothecary skills, by fiddling over the glass beaker which content I assume to be just tea and water, I am slowly loading the little bit amount of powder with the help of the precision scale that Rachel has for his chemistry.

I fill each bullet with around 1,7 grams of smokeless powder. Unlike black gunpowder, this 5.56 bullet has more chance to explode than to fire if I overfill it with powder. Even Rachel is irked by the amount of precision that I use.

“Look, Helen, I never expect Albert to be this precise about measurement, much less you are,” Rachel says as she stirs a glass beaker with a glass rod. “Ostwald, on the other hand….” She then looks at the glass beaker.

“Well, Ostwald makes thing goes boom, does he not?” I reply.

“Thinking about it, you’re not wrong, and that’s why I like him.”

I pour out the white powder slowly into the bullet casing, then slowly push the bullet into the cartridge and slowly tap it into the table surface so the copper bullet snags tightly into its casing. The last bit of the process will be putting the primer on the back of the bullet. I doubt I can do a basic test fire using this world’s rifle.

I repeat the same process over and over. It is painfully slow, especially since the vintage scale doesn’t adjust automatically like a digital scale. It uses two arms, one for the weight and the other for the smokeless powder, and it is very slow to adjust if I make even a simple bit of correction.

I spent the time just like that. Pour out the white smokeless powder into the scale, and make a fine adjustment by scooping it bit by bit using a teaspoon, before finally putting the powder into the casing using the help of a piece of paper. I then snag a copper bullet into the casing and tap it on the table lightly. Using a hammer is asking for trouble, so this is the best I can do.

I still have a lot of powder left alongside a lot of materials left. Well, it’s time to design the rifle. I have a lot of aluminum and steel, so I will use that component, for most of the rifles since using wood in an AR-15 is very odd when better options are available.

I put all of the 5.56 x 45 ammunition on one of the shelves in the library, right next to a book about the story of the maid and its master. I think the only people that will read that are either my sister or my mother. Well, I’ll never know.

“Hey, hey, hey,” my father suddenly barges into the room, holding two rifles in his hands. “It’s father’s time. Let’s get shooting!”

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